The Loyal Opposition, Part 13
Title: The Loyal Opposition
Author: latetothpartyhp
Rating: PG-13
Genre: drama
Spoilers: through Pandora
Pairings: ETA: I envisioned this as mainly a Chlark confrontation, but what emerged in addition to that were some hints of Chlex friendship, mutual Chless manipulation, and some (mostly) off-screen Clana. There's also a Lexana fight for anyone who's interested. And Cless! We have added Cless!
Warnings: some violence & language - ETA: Character deaths in store.
Summary / Author's Note: Chloe's on a mission for the resistance. Could be a Supernatural crossover if you squint real hard. Also, please check out the amazing new banner created by go_clo !
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Part 13 / Part 14 / Part 15 / Part 16
Author's Note for this section: I had this part sketched out very early on, and in the interval between sketching & writing the show killed off a character I needed to make this work. So we are officially way, way AU.
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After so long...
Her eyes popped open. No. That was not a safe thought to have. Not anymore. She didn't know what a safe thought would be, but that wasn't it.
"What happened?"
Madelyn had happened. How...? She'd always felt her before, that sense of wild, expectant otherness. Sometimes demanding, sometimes hedonistic. This time it had just felt like her. A her with huge mood swings, but still her. She wasn't Madelyn. She didn't want those things Madelyn wanted. She wanted other things. Things that suddenly seemed within her reach.
Kal-El hadn't been the only one being played.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm..." she stared at him blankly. The pit in her stomach had not gone away, and the burning on her back had flared. They made it hard to think of an excuse. What did you say when you had a supernaturally induced asthma attack while kissing someone?
You asked about his girlfriend. The one he really wanted. That's what.
"Where's Lana?" He blinked. She looked him firmly in the eye and forced her saliva down. "You wanted to see Lana earlier. It was all you wanted from me when I first arrived. How is she? Is she ... ?" Alive? Under guard? Being questioned? "...alright?"
He looked away. Another look she recognized. This time she shared it. She couldn't believe she hadn't thought about Lana until now; everything depended on her. Or had depended. It should have been the first question out of her mouth when she realized he'd been fully ... taken in.
"She's fine. She's asleep. She's had a long day. She needed to rest." He paused, as if remembering something. "She's what I came to talk to you about, actually."
Of course she was. Why that should bother Chloe now she had no idea. It must be her back. She would kill to jump into a cold shower right now. "Is something wrong?"
"It's the way she says she lost her powers. She says one of our people, a woman called Alia, attacked her. Alia went rogue several months ago and Lana found out, started tracking her. She said she was following a lead in the Basque Country when Alia ambushed her."
"Wait -- you're saying this woman attacked Lana before she lost her powers? How would she be able to do that?"
"That's just it -- Lana doesn't think Alia's a woman. Not only was she not repelled by the kryptonite radiation, Lana says she also sprouted metal tentacles."
"She thinks Alia's Brainiac."
"Exactly. But she said it wasn't like before -- once the tentacles made contact, it was like Alia short-circuited. She just collapsed. Lana was able to get away, but her powers were gone. She said she had just gotten back to her base a few days before our team intercepted her, and that's when she realized she wasn't giving off anymore radiation."
Chloe chewed her lip and wondered. If this was the case, had Lex known? Would he have still sent her? With so much they didn't know, so much that could have gone wrong? Could still go wrong. Bringing Madelyn into play had always been a gamble; if Lana was out of commission, and Lex knew it, he must be desperate. That thought brought its own brand of fear to the mix. Her stomach roiled again, and she wanted nothing more than to hang her head between her knees. That would require an agony of stretching, though.
"Is she alright?" Forget trying to think. She should just keep talking; it kept her from running out into the hall screaming.
"She appears to be, but I don't know. If Alia was really Brainiac, I'm worried she may have been infected the way you were." A deep crease formed between his brows as he frowned; she noticed there was a little wrinkle forming there from use. "I need to know exactly what happened to you when Brainiac possessed you."
"A lot of the same. Octopus arms with drills on them piercing my skull. I think he meant to put me in a catatonic state, the way he had with Lana, except it didn't work. There was this light, like when my meteor ability would activate, and then I don't remember anything after that until waking up in the ICU."
"Lana didn't mention light."
"That could have been just a side-effect of my mutation." She remembered what she had been told of the aftermath and paused, considering. He had been so touchy, earlier, when she'd asked about Zod...
"You killed him, didn't you?" she asked. His head jerked up, eyes enormous. "After Brainiac attacked me, you killed him."
His mouth made little fish movements. "He wasn't a man, Chloe. He was a machine. An 'it'."
He was staring at her indignantly. She made sure to stare back. "That must have been some fight."
"He'd been weakened, he was at the power plant looking for energy, I just gave him some."
I see. "So it's possible that by attacking me, it damaged itself someway. The way it appears Alia was damaged by Lana." His hard, defensive face relaxed as he latched on to her last speculation. Oh Clark. What have you done?
"You think the suit may have protected her the way your mutation protected you?"
"The suit made her invulnerable, didn't it? Maybe it gave her some kind of regenerative ability that worked on Brainiac the same way my mutation did." Or maybe Brainiac was vulnerable to kryptonite once the stuff got into its moving parts, or maybe Alia!Brainiac was an older, unimproved model. If she'd been in the Orb, she would be at least a decade older than the version that landed in the second meteor shower. Would that matter? How could they -- Her heart stopped for a moment. Strangely, the pulse in her back continued to throb. That, she supposed, was probably a good thing, all in all. As long as she embraced that irritation, she thought, she might still maintain control. That tattoo just might be what saw her through this.
"Jor-El might know," she said.